Fisherman Yutaka Watanabe sits on the roof of a destroyed house, while looking for missing family members. On 11 March, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck 70 kilometers off the Tōhoku coast, in northeastern Japan. The quake triggered a tsunami that swept inland over an area of some 500 square kilometers, destroying buildings, crippling infrastructure, and resulting in the displacement of more than 340,000 people. The earthquake was the most powerful ever to hit Japan, and one of the most forceful documented in the world. Flooding and damage to transport connections, power stations, and other vital facilities severely hindered recovery operations.

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Yasuyoshi Chiba is a Japanese photographer. After studying photography and holography at Musashino Art University in Tokyo, he joined Asahi Shimbun as a staff photographer. He became a freelancer in 2007 and moved to Kenya. In 2011, he moved to Sao Paulo, Brazil and started working as a staff photographer for Agence France-Presse. His photographs from the post-presidential election chaos in Kenya won several awards, including a prize in the 2009 World Press Photo Contest.